She is a normal young lady, with higher education, with a beautiful family and with a rich life. She never took into account the patterns in which the society wanted to frame her and she ended up being a model for Romani ethny women.
She was born in a family with 4 brothers – the eldest, of 18 years old and the youngest, of 12 years old. She was the longed for little girl, her parents miracle and the wonder of the boys from the house. She lived in clover, loved and protected, spoilt and treated gently. Today is, still, their miracle. Because the love and clover didn’t spoil her, but helped her and encouraged her to follow her dreams.
Corina is 28 years old and a beautiful life. Her life was always like that, but she could not always enjoy it, at its real worth. In her village, Belcești, from Iași County there weren’t too many families of Romani ethny. Thus, in her child soul appeared fears and worries, frustrations and wonders. „I was thinking: God, when I will be older, will it be like that for me? Why I was born a gypsy and not a Romanian girl? I preferred, then, to look in my neighbours’ garden, without realizing that, actually, I was coming from a good family, of hardworking people, who worked all their life”, says Corina. The regret belongs to the fact that she was caught as well, sometime, in the trap of generalizations, until realizing that good or bad we make, as people – without being influenced by the ethny.
Only then when he realized how many reasons she has for which to thank for, she could be proud and to enjoy, fully, by her origins. Her father comes from a family with Romanian mother and gypsy father, and her mother comes from well-known musicians’ people.
Both parents worked and strived to ensure what’s best for the children – even though this meant, many times, sacrificing the time spent at home. The father worked all his life at CFR and he was very correct and devoted to his work. The mother, being a seamstress, went a lot through the markets and made trading. Thus, Corina was raised, in a great extent, by her brothers.
The four boys from the family have attended schools of arts & crafts, then they found jobs. They didn’t want, they didn’t think further either, but they always had the conscience of the fact that their sister must be an important person someday. „I didn’t need, necessarily, somebody who would push me from the back, but I was impressed by their attitude. In the primary school and in the secondary school they always reminded me that I must study, they asked me if I did my homework, they announced the time for putting out the light in the evening, in order to rest enough and cope with the classes. Now, every one of them watches his children. I have a niece who is a student at the faculty in Germany, I have another niece in the 12th grade, who wants to study Medicine, and all the others are at middle schools”.
After the 8 classes studied in Belcești, Corina came to Iași, at the Pedagogical High school. She followed her way on the base of her mother’s dream, who would have liked to be a school teacher. She accomplished, another dream of hers too, that of studying Romani language. „At home I knew it only by ear and in dialect, after my mother spoke. Because she spoke in Romani, but we answered her in Romanian. She sent me once after firewood and I brought her a dust pan”, remembers Corina. She amuses herself for a second, but she becomes serious again and she warns: „We lose our language and this is not good, but I hope that my nephews, and the other children to be aware how important is and start learning it”.
He was part of the 1st generation with a certification for teaching in Romani language. He had a teacher with passion – as a mother & friend. The relationship lasted in time. The teacher Elena Motaș is still today, a friend, but also Corina’s bride’s woman. „When I met my first pupils, they were like some injured sparrows, first by the teachers’ unkindness. Nobody expected for gipsies to remain at school, for the girls to finish school. Many times, before starting a proper teaching class, we needed to have the guidance class. We met and we made evaluation’’, says Elena Motaș. „What have you been doing, what did you eat, how do you feel, did you do your homework, what do you have to learn, can I help you? I had become, now, a kind of Foster parent”. She would like to clone the Young people who were her pupils and who are, today, successful models through education. She is aware and happy that she had an important role in their development, but she doesn’t stop praising them for their will and because they worked in order to solve the problems which belonged to self-esteem.
On the received model, Corina started, then, teaching the others too. She had the first job immediately when finishing high school, at the school from Podu Iloaiei, then in Iași – as a teacher of Romani language and of Romani people history. She was also a school mediator, a person of connection between the community, school and public authority. During this time, she attended the courses of the Faculty of Economics from the University of „Petre Andrei”. At 22 she managed to join the first Project, at the National Agency for Romani people, as an expert of mediation and interculturality. She had a good income and then she could give a substantial present and form her soul to the parents. It was a satisfaction which wasn’t related, necessarily, to the gift’s value, but with the wanted confirmation of the fact that they didn’t invest in her in vain.
From 2008, Corina is always involved in European projects for the Romani people from the North – Eastern region of the country. At present, she has in subordination 2 such projects. In the first, coordinated at Alba Iulia, is an expert of professional training, by shortening the Romani’s way towards certain qualification courses. By means of the Centre of Resources for Romani Communities from Cluj Napoca, she is also an occupancy agent. She tests the skills of the people, she helps them attend a qualification course during which grants are offered, and in the end she helps them by looking for jobs.
The job joins in harmony with the family life, with the role of wife and mother of 2 children. „We met each other in Iași, when I was 18. My parents, when they found out that he is Romanian, they asked if it wouldn’t be better to get a man of Romani ethny, in order to avoid suffering later on. But, they respected also our years of friendship and, then marriage. In Constantin’s family I was accepted from the first time, probably because I was seen also as the city girl, who studies, is a student and she is obedient”, says Corina. The husband is the first person who supports her in her career. In his free time he likes to stand by her, to join her in communities, to stay among Romani people and to know them better. He goes home to his parents in law, as to his own parents, and his brothers in law are his brothers. Even more, his mother in law speaks to him in Romani, and he started understanding and even speak a few words.
Constantin worked in constructions, on excavator, in demolitions, on heavy equipment. He doesn’t avoid work, and you realize this thing even when you step into their house – a house built with his own hands. „My husband has a vocational school, like my brothers. How would it be a problem for me the fact that he doesn’t have a faculty degree, like I have? School doesn’t matter so much, when two people love each other, understand each other and don’t put barriers between them”, says Corina. And Constantin completes her: „We are a family and we get on very well. We always advise each other a lot. We started on the same road and we have all the reasons to stay close to each other. I am proud of my wife, because she has more school. And I am not ashamed to say that she is of Romani origin either. I even contradict others. Until knowing each other, I also criticised, I also offended, and I had prejudices and stereotypes. Now, I ended up knowing and I know how much I was wrong by judging an entire ethny, after a few people”.
Together with their parents, Yannis and Maya play happily. At 4 years old and at 1 year and a half old, they can’t know discrimination, not even the differentiation between one man and another. They feel with heart and they don’t have dilemmas regarding their affiliation. „I will try to implement my children that they are what they feel. If they love me, they don’t have to say they are like me. They must feel in their little souls. To be of Romani ethny you must feel something special about music, for tradition, for dance, for culture. I would like, in return, not to avoid the other children and not to have a complex from the fact that they have a Romani mother and a Romanian father”, says Corina.
Above the Romani people and the Romanian ones, Corina wants that her son and her daughter be special people and have around them special people. And the start sounds good. Because education starts from home, and in Mihăilă family aren’t absent at all the experiences, not even teaching life lessons, not smiling reasons and not even the guarantee that, bad or good, through all, they will always pass together.
This article can also be read here: http://saptepietre.ro/2015/03/sex-feminin-etnie-roma-exemplu-de-reusita-prin-educatie.html
